Tag Archives: Gaming

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Health Organization Says Gaming Addiction Is A Mental Disorder

Do you like video games?  Are you the kind that can get so lost and involved in your favorite title of the moment that you’re willing to burn vacation days and spend the entire time in a non-stop playing frenzy?

It hasn’t happened very often, but there have been a handful of documented cases where people have actually died from playing video games.

They get so wrapped up in them that they forego sleep and forget to eat. Their addiction to the game they’re playing ultimately leads to their deaths.

As crazy as that sounds, it’s true Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has made it official, naming gaming addiction as a genuine mental disorder.

The WHO has just finalized the 11th Edition of its “International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related health Problems (ICD-11)”, and it contains an entry for gaming disorders. According to the guidelines, the disorders are “characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior which may be online or offline.”

A sufferer of a Gaming Disorder will exhibit behavioral patterns “of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.”

This is big news because for the first time ever, it will give health care professionals the means to track it as a disorder and start gathering statistics on how widespread it is.  Of course, as a newly minted disorder, it’s entirely possible that there will be some misdiagnosis as health care professionals wrestle with the symptoms they’re seeing.  Enthusiastic game play could well be interpreted as a disorder when it actually isn’t.

Even if you’re not that big a fan of gaming yourself, if you know someone who has recently cut off all communication with the outside world and has cloistered himself away to play for days on end, this is a tidbit worth knowing.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New Windows 10 Update May Cause Gaming Issues

If you’ve installed Microsoft’s March 1st update for Windows 10, version 180G, be aware that a growing percentage of users are reporting performance issues that impact graphics quality and mouse movement. Granted, the issues seem to have the biggest impact on games, with gamers who play games like Destiny 2 and Call of Duty 4. Of course, performance issues are likely to crop up in a variety of other applications as well.

Microsoft engineers are tracking various discussion forums and Reddit threads where the issue surrounding the KB4482887 update is the topic. They have concluded that the biggest performance impacts come from users who are playing older games (upwards of ten years old), but don’t seem to impact people who play newer games nearly as much, which is curious to say the least.

It’s not at all surprising that gamers are the first to report performance issues.  After all, gaming tends to demand quite a lot from a computer system’s resources in ways that mucking around in a spreadsheet simply doesn’t.  Then there’s the fact that gamers live and die based on in-game lag and latency, so even small blips are very noticeable.  Even so, there are several resource intensive Enterprise applications that may suffer similar performance issues.

For their part, Microsoft is on the case and is currently scrambling to provide a fix for the update. Although to this point, they haven’t provided users with a timeframe for when it might be released.

This latest incident follows on the heels of several months’ worth of problematic Windows 10 updates which have left the company with egg on their faces and prompted them to revisit the way they handle QA/QC prior to the release of an update.

Despite the fact that they’ve been working hard to improve their approach, it seems clear that they’re not quite where they need to be yet.  If you haven’t installed the KB4482887 update yet, and you make frequent use of resource-intensive programs, it may be worth holding off until Microsoft issues an update to the update.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Nvidia Drivers Should Be Updated For Security Issues

If you use a Nvidia graphics card, be aware that the company has recently released their first security patch of 2019, bearing the ID # 4772.  It’s an important one in that it addresses eight security flaws that leave un-patched systems vulnerable to attack.

It should be noted that none of the flaws addressed in this patch are rated as critical, but all are rated as high.

The issues addressed in the patch run the gamut of protecting your system. This ranges from denial of service attacks, to remote code execution, and in six of the eight cases, an escalation of privileges.

This patch is applicable across a range of Nvidia’s most popular products, including their GeForce, Quadro, NVS and Tesla graphics cards. So if you use Nvidia graphics cards, then odds are good that this patch will be of benefit to you.

This brings us to the topic of how to apply the latest patch.  If your system is Windows based, then applying the latest patch via the Windows control panel should be the only action needed.  If you’re a Linux user, then the specific steps you’ll need to follow will vary from one build to the next. It and may involve a bit of manual work, navigating to the Nvidia control panel after the driver has been updated.

Also note that if you have Nvidia products on your system, you can download and install an app called the GeForce Experience, which will alert you when a new patch is available and guide you through its installation.

In any case, this patch is important enough to warrant a special mention, as the issues it protects against are fairly high profile.  Make sure your IT staff is aware so they can put this one high on the list of priorities.

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